1. Field
The present disclosure relates to an optical connector for coupling together optical components. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to an optical connector for coupling together optical components with reduced mechanical-alignment sensitivity.
2. Related Art
While optical communication potentially offers higher performance than electrical communication, in many applications this advantage is outweighed by higher costs. In particular, many optical systems have higher manufacturing, installation, and maintenance costs. For example, optical connectors, which are used to optically couple systems components, are often a major contributor to the overall cost of optical systems.
One reason for this is the need to establish and maintain tight mechanical alignment between optical connectors and associated optical components. Without such tight mechanical alignment, the optical connectors will reflect optical signals (instead of communicating them), thereby reducing the efficiency of the optical connector and, thus, the performance of the optical systems. For example, carrier wavelengths in many optical systems are on the order of 1 μm, and optical reflections can occur in optical connectors even if there is mechanical misalignment of a quarter of a carrier wavelength. Thus, the mechanical alignment requirements in optical connectors can be less than 1 μm.
Some existing optical connectors address this design requirement using precision molded and polished components, as well as with mechanical strain-relief connectors. While these techniques facilitate precise mechanical alignment, the resulting optical connector is often large and expensive.
Other existing optical connectors amortize the size and cost of an optical connector across a parallel set of optical fibers, which are often referred to as an ‘optical ribbon cable.’ For example, an optical ribbon cable may include twelve parallel optical fibers in a one-by-twelve arrangement. However, it is often difficult to further increase the number of optical fibers in an optical ribbon cable (for example, to multiple rows or more than twelve parallel optical fibers) while maintaining the required mechanical alignment.
Hence, what is needed is an optical connector without the above-described problems.